Interesting energy developments in Germany’s capital: even as cash-strapped cities and government agencies elsewhere in the world continue to sell off public assets to corporate owners, citizens in Berlin want to buy back the city’s power supply from Vattenfall. As reported in Renewables International, the coalition that governs Berlin... Read more

Information and communication technologies (ICT) could help cities reduce their electricity use by 30 to 40 percent, according to a European research project. The ENERsip project found that combining a specially designed ICT platform with micro-generation — small-scale renewable installations like rooftop solar panels on homes — could optimise... Read more

Sometimes, keeping up with the Joneses can be a good thing … especially if the Joneses have just put up solar panels on their roof. Researchers from Yale and New York University have found that people are more likely to install solar panels after a few of their neighbors... Read more

Following its release earlier this year of a system that links energy creation and storage for the home, Panasonic is moving ahead with plans to develop a full-scale Smart Home Energy Management System (SMARTHEMS). Energy-saving efforts in Japan have taken on a growing urgency in Japan in the wake... Read more

What will it take to provide reliable electricity to more people across the Philippines? The country’s largest distributor of electrical power sees an answer in better, smarter computing and smart-grid technology. Manila Electric Company (Meralco) is enlisting the help of Cisco to take a “holistic approach” to electricity service... Read more

Germany’s already an undisputed powerhouse in renewable energy, but it will need to become even more innovative now that it aims to quit nuclear power by 2022. Up until last year, Germany operated 17 nuclear reactors that provided about one-fourth of the country’s electricity. Following the Fukushima disaster in... Read more

What’s not to like about energy efficiency? Every little improvement we can make in that area is a bit more energy saved, a bit less carbon sent into the atmosphere, right? Wrong. As good a thing as it is, energy efficiency alone won’t help us “leave oil before it... Read more

Why should we have to wait for some smart grid of the future to access information about our home energy use, whenever and wherever we want it? All the data’s already there, somewhere inside your utility company’s computer records, isn’t it? That’s the idea behind “Green Button,” a US... Read more

Contrary to what all the flak it gets from political critics suggests, the US Department of Energy (DOE) does not, in fact, spend most of its money on so-called solar debacles or electric-powered luxury cars. Much of its spending — more than 40 percent in its proposed budget for... Read more

The year 2012 might not see the fulfillment of any ancient Mayan “prophecy” of the end of the world, but it does appear to be signaling a different “end time” … one marking the end of business-as-usual trade with China. In his State of the Union address late last... Read more

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